


the best of us (can find happiness in misery)

by zoemorgans



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: ...minor character death?, F/M, Gen, by which i mean a minor character i made up and already stan, riley's mom has got it going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 16:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10903338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoemorgans/pseuds/zoemorgans
Summary: "Riley thinks that Earth has changed all of them in one way or another, but he doesn’t think anything could bring about change so cataclysmic that it would send Doctor Griffin intoMarcus Kane’s bed."Kabby, from Riley's POV.





	the best of us (can find happiness in misery)

Riley hadn’t, if he is being perfectly honest, given Abby Griffin more than a second thought since the last time he had seen her, anxious but full of purpose and on her way to Mecha Station, but his chest tightens at the unexpected sight of her, looking almost exactly as she had done that day, minus the braid and the lingering bruises that form a telltale ring around her neck.

He had kept to himself for the first few days, sequestered in the little living space he has been allotted (he suspects the fact he doesn't have to share has more to do with pity than the convenient availability of single rooms) and altogether too unused to the idea of freedom to know what to do with it, but Riley is in Arkadia for less than a week when Doctor Griffin’s rover arrives from Polis. There is a commotion when she returns that draws even Riley from his solitude to see a vehicle parked inside the gates and Clarke holding on to her mother like a lifeline. 

He doesn’t blame her. He had recognised more faces than he had expected when Bellamy Blake delivered what was left of Farm Station to Arkadia but four hundred people is significantly less than the thousand that had been left when they’d brought the Ark crashing to the ground.  Riley knows what happened to _his_ people (he recalls it nightly in his dreams) but there are faces missing, friends and acquaintances from his life before, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever know what happened to them.

He can’t decide whether it’s better that way; whether, given the option, he would prefer to _wonder_ rather than know that they’re gone. He thinks he might give anything for uncertainty where his own mother is concerned.

Raven Reyes apparently has other concerns.

“Abby _definitely_ got laid,” she declares to the small group gathered to his right. Riley recognises Monty Green easily enough – they had grown up together on Farm Station – and recalls that Jasper Jordan had never been far from his side, but all he knows about the guard is that Bryan seems to be giving him a wide berth and that the mechanic is apparently some kind of genius.

“I’m not sure Doctor Griffin would appreciate you speculating about her love life, Raven.”

“Who said anything about love?” Jasper interjects, draping his arm loosely around Monty’s shoulders. “We’re talking about _sex_ , Monty.”

“Who’s having sex now?” Harper chimes in, appearing out of the crowd. 

“Kane and Abby,” Miller and Raven answer in unison. 

Riley tries not to listen – his interest in Doctor Griffin’s sex life is somewhat skewed by the fact that he’s pretty sure she’s changed his diapers – but the name _Kane_ takes him by surprise. Quite possibly because it is the _last name in the universe_ he expects and he tries to reconcile the information with his own memories of Clarke’s mom and the councilor. He can’t. The Abby Griffin he remembers had sat on his couch next to his mother and trashed Kane over glasses of moonshine. They’ve been at loggerheads for longer than he can remember. He’d put her in a goddamn _airlock_ and had been prepared to send her out into space, and Raven Reyes thinks that they’re lovers? Riley thinks that Earth has changed all of them in one way or another, but he doesn’t think _anything_ could bring about change so cataclysmic that it would send Doctor Griffin into _Marcus Kane’s bed._

“We don’t know that,” Monty sighs, apparently the only person as uncomfortable with this line of conversation as he is. “Raven is just speculating.”

“They were alone in Polis for _nine days_. What do you think they did?”

“I don’t know… something to do with _keeping the peace_?”

They drift off in the direction of Clarke and her mother, leaving Riley to his solitude… and the entirely unwelcome, but nonetheless niggling, desire to know whether Abby Griffin really _did_ get laid.

 

* * *

 

He gets his first chance to talk to her two days later when he is jolted from his sleep by a memory Riley would prefer to forget, and bumps his head on the metal beam above his cot. It isn’t quite how he has imagined his first conversation with Doctor Griffin, though quite frankly he has preferred not to think of it at all when the last time he'd seen her he'd had his mother at his side, alive and well and promising her friend they would meet again. It's cowardly, he knows, but he thinks he's earned the right to be a little cowardly after all that he’s been through, and he prays that the doctor is in bed and Jackson is in medical, in her place. But if there is one thing he remembers about Abby Griffin it's that she has never shirked her duties for something as trivial as _sleep_ and he finds her precisely where he expects to, head bowed and busy cataloguing equipment. Medical is seemingly empty, apart from her and him, and Riley clears his throat awkwardly to get her attention.

She turns around at the interruption, brow creasing for only a moment before recognition crosses her face and her eyes light up in what he thinks might be relief.

“ _Riley_? I didn’t think that—” She breaks off, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “Farm Station… you weren’t with the others.”

There’s a flicker of hope in her eyes that Riley would do anything not to crush, but his hesitation seems to be answer enough to the unspoken question on the tip of her tongue. They both know what happened to his father – it had been Doctor Griffin that had been there with them all at the end – but the last time she had seen his mother she hadn’t been murdered by an Ice Nation warrior for trying to save his life. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her how she died. He doesn’t have the strength to speak of it at all.

She reaches for him instead, her hand reaching up to cup his cheek and Riley fights fruitlessly against the sting of tears in his eyes.

“I’m _so_ pleased to see you.”

“I’m pleased to see you too ma’am,” he says and he _means_ it. He had walked through the doors hoping to find Jackson instead but when he looks at Doctor Griffin he doesn't see his mother's lifeless body. He sees the woman they had both loved on the Ark. “Clarke said you’d been in the grounder capital?”

(He still can’t believe the grounders _have_ a capital; it seems like entirely too civilised a concept for barbarians but Riley keeps that thought to himself.)

“Mm. There was a lot to do after—” she hesitates. “After everything.”

There seems to be a consensus in camp that _everything_ is the best way to describe the thing that had happened before Bellamy and the others had turned up at Farm Station. He thinks it is as close as he’s going to get to knowing but whatever happened it was bad enough that friends and family won’t look each other in the eye.  Riley had spent so long on a freezing cold cot in Farm Station thinking there couldn’t possibly be anything worse than his own miserable predicament, but there are ghosts enough in Arkadia that make him think perhaps he was wrong.

“Will Kane be joining us in camp soon?”

He throws the question out casually, as a distraction from ‘everything’ rather than a subtle probe into their relationship but Riley has been, despite his better judgement, curious since he had overhead Raven Reyes suggest that a relationship existed, but as far as distractions go it's clearly a terrible one, and Riley watches Doctor Griffin’s expression waver, soften, and crumple in the time it takes him to draw his next breath. 

“The Chancellor,” she replies, and to her credit her voice is even, “is needed in Polis.”

Tentatively, he reaches for the hand that she had dropped.

“Well, I’m glad _you’re_ back, ma’am.”

The touch seems to clear some of the fog from her eyes — enough, at least, for her to smile again.

“ _Abby_ , Riley,” she scolds lightly, giving his hand a small squeeze before letting go. “We’ve known each other long enough for you to call me Abby.”

He flushes awkwardly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and she laughs at his sudden shyness. 

“I don’t know about that,” he replies, feeling his own mood lift a little at her laughter and he manages a smile of his own. “My mom raised me to treat my elders with respect, she would never forgive—”

He breaks off abruptly as his mind catches up with his mouth and he realises what he's said; _who_ he's mentioned, as casually as he might have done if they had been chatting on the Ark. It hurts, but not as much as it might have done to think of her alone in the silence of his room. 

Abby gives him a soft smile. “I think she would like it if we were _friends_. Don’t you?”

Riley thinks she would. He thinks that he would like it too. 

 

* * *

 

The next night Riley wakes up in a tangle of sheets, skin flushed, hot to the touch, but the icy chill of the Ice Nation still lingering deep in his bones. There’s no point in staying in bed – this is a common enough occurrence for him to know there’s no hope of sleep claiming him again now – and at this time of the night the halls of Arkadia will be all but deserted and there will be little chance of him encountering anyone. 

He wanders blindly around the creaking bones of Alpha Station when he leaves his room but soon enough Riley realises with a start that he’s made his way to medical. He supposes it makes sense. He doesn’t think thinking of the Ice Nation, of his mom, will ever be easy, but it had been easier, just for just a moment, remembering happier times with someone who had loved his mother too, whose memories of her will keep her alive.

He’s through the doors and several strides into medical when he hears voices, both of them familiar but one is distorted by static Riley realizes is coming from the radio in Doctor Griffin’s hand.

_“—miss you.”_

He can’t see her face, just the tangle of her hair, but he sees her shoulders rise and fall with a shudder at the crackle of Kane’s voice.

“Me too.” She expels her breath in a sigh. “I would have been just as well staying there for all the good I’m doing here. Clarke is running camp. Raven is in charge of supplies. I feel _useless_ , Marcus.”

_“You’re never useless, Abby. Clarke needs you. Our people need you.”_

“I need _you_.”

There’s so much naked want in her voice that it heats Riley’s cheeks and it is so obvious in that moment, watching the shaky rise and fall of her shoulders and the white of her knuckles where she clutches the radio, that Abby Griffin isn't just sleeping with Marcus Kane (except she almost definitely _is_ ). She's in love with him too.

He makes his exit from medical then, shuffling quietly and purposefully in the directions of the door, determined not to listen to another second of a conversation so clearly not meant for anybody else but them. 

He still can’t reconcile the man he remembers from the Ark, the stiff, stern absolutist, with the man on the other end of the radio who had sounded ready to bolt to Arkadia at the very possibility of the woman he had once fought tooth and nail with in any kind of distress, but if Abby and Kane, of _all_ people, have managed to put aside their differences and work for the greater good _—_ and, somewhere along the way, found a way to make each other _happy_ _—_ then maybe what’s left of their people have a shot of surviving after all.


End file.
